Warning: The website is not able to handle more than 15 connections at a time. Please do not have groups larger than 15 submit content at one time.

If you would like to help improve the site, please send an email to webmaster@chnm.gmu.edu with the number of connections, browser type and version, OS type and version, and the exact URL you were trying to access when the issue began.

WARM-UP QUESTION:

Which document is more trustworthy? Why?
(Read each source below, then answer the questions in the notebook. Ask your teacher for an inquiry organizer worksheet to help you think about the ways that the sources support and contradict each other.)

SOURCES:

READ: Court Affidavit

Head Note: This sworn statement was submitted to the state court when Rosa Parks appealed her conviction.

Rosa Parks, Appellant

VS

City of Montgomery, Appellee

Appealed to Court of Appeals of Alabama From: Circuit Court of Montgomery County

Feb. 12, 1957 Affirmed--[illegible signature]

Agreed Stipulation of Facts

Attached hereto and marked Exhibit "A" is a plan of the seating arrangement of the bus on which the alleged violation occurred. There were thirty-six seats assigned for passengers. Just prior to the alleged violation by the defendant the ten front seats were assigned for white persons and the back twenty-six seats were assigned for negroes. The defendant was sitting on one of the first dual seats immediately behind those occupied by white passengers and all seats assigned to whites were occupied and all standing room in that section was taken. Negroes were also standing in the negro section. The evidence is in dispute as to whether or not there were vacant seats in the negro section. In order to take on more white passengers who were at that time waiting to board the bus the driver, the agent in charge, requested the passengers on the row of seats immediately in the rear of the white section to give up their seats to white passengers. This would have made four more seats available to whites and under such reassignment the white section would have been increased to fourteen seats and the negro section decreased to twenty-two seats. The defendant, a negro, refused to move in accordance with the request of the bus driver, the agent in charge, and was arrested for such refusal.

The defendant was convicted in the Recorders Court of the City of Montgomery, Alabama, and appealed to this Court where the case is at issue.

Source: Excerpt from the brief filed on behalf of Rosa Parks in Parks vs. City of Montgomery. Filed in the Court of Appeals, Montgomery, Alabama, March 28, 1956. Signed by D. Eugene Loe, attorney for the city of Montgomery, and Fred D. Gray and Charles D. Langford, attorneys for Rosa Parks.

Please log in to use the notebook

Create new account

Winner of the American Historical Association's 2008 James Harvey Robinson Prize for an Outstanding Teaching Aid.

A project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, and School of Education, Stanford University with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and additional support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.